


Do It With Style

by RainyDayDecaf



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (the homophobia is offscreen and only referenced), Alternate Universe - Human, Butch Aziraphale (Good Omens), F/F, First Meetings, Hair Salon AU, Hair Stylist Crowley, Homophobic Language, Humor, Ineffable Wives | Female Aziraphale/Female Crowley (Good Omens), Meet-Cute, Romance, aziraphale gets an awesome haircut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29516025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainyDayDecaf/pseuds/RainyDayDecaf
Summary: “You see, I want to look... w-well, I’m afraid I don’t exactly know how to describe it.  But I believe the term is butch...?”Or, Aziraphale gets a new look, and Crowley is her hair stylist.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 103





	Do It With Style

She stalked into the salon just before lunch all in a huff, dark golden hair in disarray from the wind and rain outside. Not one of the regulars, Crowley didn’t recognize her, but the vision alone was enough to make the stylist pause in the middle of sweeping up after the previous client. Such _glorious_ hair, wild and unruly with a touch of curl, that head was just _begging_ to be pampered. Crowley’s fingers itched to snip away the split ends, throw in some highlights and unleash its true glory.

Beelzebub began to move in that direction, but Crowley swooped to intercept. “I’ve got this.”

“You just said you were going to lunch,” Beelzebub said, their irritation clear.

“No I didn’t, you imagined it,” Crowley hissed out of the side of her mouth before plastering on an eager grin. “How can I help you? Looking for a trim?”

Goldilocks seemed a little startled at being addressed immediately. She blinked at Crowley and, someone help her, those dove gray eyes were devastating up close.

“A bit more than a trim, but yes.” She glanced over at the other seated customers lined up along the wall. “Shouldn’t I wait my turn...?”

“No, no, no, you clearly had an appointment!” Crowley said and ushered Goldilocks into the chair, blithely ignoring the cries of protest from the waiting area.

“But we were here first!”

“I’ve been waiting for _two hours!”_

“Shadwell, you’ve been waiting twenty minutes at most!” Crowley retorted. She circled around behind her newest client and oh-so-casually let her fingers slide through those silky strands. Ostensibly, it was to get an idea of the texture she would be working with, but secretly, Crowley was reveling in the thickness, the bounciness, no signs of recent bleaching or harsh treatment. It was a mighty struggle not to bury her face in there and _inhale._

“Ssssssooooo,” Crowley said, gaze flicking up to their reflections in the mirror, “what can I do for you, Miss…?”

The client swallowed, suddenly looking a lot less huffy and a lot more nervous. “Aziraphale,” she mumbled.

“Aziraphale. Lovely name. Angel name, right?”

Beelzebub scoffed loudly, the noise only barely muffled by Michael’s blow dryer. Crowley ignored them and leaned in closer, still carding her fingers through and loving every second of it. “How much are we taking off today, then? Up to the shoulders? The chin?”

“Well, actually, I was hoping...” Aziraphale seemed to steep herself and blurted the rest out. “I want to chop it all off.”

Years and years of practice helped Crowley rein in her devastation before it could show on her face. But she could already see it in her mind’s eye, see all this wildness brutally cut away and tamed to a conservative style that would make Aziraphale look perfectly respectable and dull on the arm of her partner at some business luncheon or church social. The other middle-aged ladies there would all nod in approval at her new look and never even notice that they were all clones of each other. Same highlights, same layers, same, same, _same._

“...all of it?” Crowley asked, just to be sure.

Aziraphale nodded, biting her lip. “Yes. You see, I want to look... w-well, I’m afraid I don’t exactly know how to describe it. But I believe the term is _butch...?”_

Oh. _Oh._ She heard Michael shut off the blow dryer, saw Beelzebub whip their head around, and Crowley couldn’t for the life of her suppress the maniacal grin that spread across her face, heart thumping with excitement.

“Ohhhh, _yes._ I know exactly what you mean. Just let me pull up some pictures...”

Crowley snatched up her phone and did some hasty googling while Aziraphale fussed with the hem of her shirt. But when Crowley crouched to show her a few examples, the fidgeting stilled and her eyes came alive with a desire that was almost painful.

“This what you had in mind?”

“That… oh, that would be _perfect,”_ Aziraphale murmured. She scrolled through image after image of famous bi and lesbian celebrities who had all scandalized the critics at one time or another by taking clippers to their heads. Then she sighed wistfully. “I just, I don’t know if I can pull it off.”

Crowley had to scoff at that. “Of course you can! Listen, let me tell you something, Aziraphale. _Anyone_ can pull off any hairstyle they bloody well please. It’s not a matter of looks, it’s a matter of confidence. And sometimes, products.”

She went even lower to catch Aziraphale’s eye, and it killed her just a little bit to see how uncertain she looked. “But, ah, for the record. If it makes you feel better… I think you would _rock_ it.”

“Oh, you would say that,” Aziraphale said, but there was a tiny smile twitching at her lips. Her eyes swept over Crowley, lingering on her head that was shaved on one side and shoulder-length on the other and at the moment dyed a bright, vivid red. Crowley was used to being stared at, whether in awe or envy or disapproval, but the way Aziraphale was looking sent pleasant shivers up her spine, like Crowley was the rarest of treasures to be lovingly adored.

Crowley cleared her throat and straightened up so she could fetch the cape and drape it over Aziraphale with a flourish. “So what brought this on? Trying to broadcast to all the single ladies how _very_ available you are?”

 _“Oh my God, Crowley,”_ Beelzebub said under their breath. Crowley shot them a murderous look through the mirrors.

“Maybe a little bit,” Aziraphale admitted to her lap. “But really, it’s just becoming difficult to manage. It gets in the way when I’m trying to work, it takes _ages_ to wash. And…”

She shook her head and looked back up at Crowley. “Oh, the truth is, I’m doing this to spite my family! Ever since I came out… ever since then, I’ve been trying to feel more comfortable in my skin. And yet my _entire_ family feels the need to have an opinion on it. At our last gathering, I wore a men’s suit, and they had the gall to tell me I should go back home and change! My cousin said _to my face_ that… oh, never mind what he said, I hate even thinking about it!”

Aziraphale was almost out of breath by that point in her righteous rant, so Crowley put a gentle hand on her shoulder, mentally raging against that awful family.

“Well, needless to say, I’m quite done with it all,” Aziraphale declared. “If they’re going to be embarrassed of my existence, then I’ll… I’ll jolly well _give_ _them_ something to be embarrassed about! And I’ll be very comfortable doing it!”

Michael’s client whooped from her chair, and that set off a smattering of applause from the people in the waiting area. Aziraphale made a little mortified noise and buried her face in her hands, but Crowley was right there to pull her back up, beaming ear to ear.

“Hey, come on, none of that! I’m going to take good care of you. You’ll be the most stunning butch to ever walk the streets of London! And if all else fails, it’s only _hair._ It grows back. I’ll even help you through the awkward phase. Been through it myself I don't even know how many times. It’s why we invented hats.”

That finally got a little laugh out of Aziraphale. “I do like hats. Alright. I leave myself in your capable hands, my dear.”

“Good, terrific!” Crowley picked up the scissors and did a little fake-out snip in the direction of Aziraphale’s head, which made her poor client jump and then puff up in annoyance. “To the sink with you, angel. Let’s get started.”

“Oh, one more thing!” Aziraphale said quickly. “I also wanted to dye it? If that’s not too much to ask all at once?”

“No, not at all,” Crowley said, surprised yet again, but in a good way. “What were you thinking for the color?”

Aziraphale looked at herself in the mirror and lifted her chin determinedly. “Platinum blonde,” she declared.

 _I love her, I love her, I love her,_ Crowley thought on endless repeat as she skipped off to the back room to fetch more supplies.

* * *

It had been four weeks, and if anyone cared to ask Crowley, she was _definitely not_ waiting for the angel to call.

It had been hard to tell at the time whether Aziraphale liked her new look. She had been very silent and kept her eyes shut for most of the actual cutting, then at the end seemed torn between shock and fascination and kept saying she would need to ‘get used to it’. Then she had received an urgent call and needed to run out, so Crowley had barely had time to shove a business card into her hand and instruct her to come back if she wanted anything changed or touched up.

Crowley couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad sign that she had heard nothing since then. Which was annoying enough on its own. Crowley rather prided herself on _not_ obsessing over whether or not a client liked her work. If they did, they came back. If they didn’t, they were generally polite to her face and then she never saw them again. She had a steady number of regulars, so Crowley didn’t mind occasionally losing one or two if they found her methods a little too bold and experimental.

But she didn’t _want_ Aziraphale to go somewhere else. She didn’t want to think of Aziraphale begging some other stylist to “fix” what Crowley had done. The mere _thought_ of Aziraphale looking in her mirror and being upset about what she saw was… far more painful than it should be considering they had only met the one time.

Maybe she should have eased Aziraphale into the transition? Started with a shaggy pixie or a bob? In hindsight, that would have been the _smart_ thing to do, rather than scare her off by practically shaving her head…

“Quit moping,” Beelzebub said from where they were lounging in one of the salon chairs like a throne.

Crowley, having been caught checking the voicemails for the fifth time, snatched up a mister and went to water the plants in the waiting area. “I’m not _moping.”_

“She’s pining,” Michael said airily. “You can tell because she’s been playing nothing but Queen on the radio for the past three hours.”

“Alright, alright, leave me alone,” Crowley grumbled. “Can’t you see I’m in love?”

“Do you even remember her name?”

“Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate,” Croey said dreamily and knew full well the other two were rolling their eyes. “I looked up her namesake the other day. The angel who gave the flaming sword away to Adam and Eve. Best part is, they _lied to God_ about it! Can you believe that? An angel, lying to the Almighty?”

“That version was never accepted as biblical canon,” Michael said.

“Well, this is why they invented headcanons.”

“You can’t just substitute your own headcanon in place of the Creator’s divine—”

“Why not?” Crowley said, gesturing with the plant mister. “The people who actually wrote the Bible did it all the time!”

Michael shot her a venomous look over the head of the nervous young man whose hair she was trimming.

“Oh, what’s God gonna go about it?” Crowley retorted. _“Smite_ me? Strike me down for blasphemy?”

The bell above the door rang. Crowley whirled around theatrically and aimed her mister at the intruder. _“They’ve come for me! Save the plants!”_

Aziraphale yelped and ducked the spray of water. “Good Heavens! Should i come back another time?”

Crowley dropped the plant mister. “Ngk. Angel!”

“Oh. Hello, my dear.” Aziraphale smiled at her, so bright and happy and completely at odds with the elaborate worst-case scenarios Crowley had been crafting in her head for weeks. And Crowley abruptly realized she had spent so much time worrying about whether or not she would see Aziraphale again that she found herself completely unprepared for the reality of actually _seeing_ her.

And what a vision she made! Crowley had given her exactly what she asked for that day—she had dyed Aziraphale’s hair a blinding white blonde to rival the sun, then buzzed the back and sides down to half an inch with _just_ enough length on top to be styled however Aziraphale liked best. Today, it had been left to its own devices, and the wind had fluffed uo the curls up and left them artfully tousled like a cloud.

Yet Crowley’s work was clearly only the finishing touch on the whole picture, the perfect complement to the velvet waistcoat and trousers and sensible brogues, complete with a pocket watch and a _bowtie,_ of all things. Crowley couldn’t remember what Aziraphale had been wearing the last time, but she was positive it had been nothing quite so striking, so suited to her personality. Aziraphale had been beautiful before, obviously, but like _this…_ and it wasn’t _only_ the haircut and the wardrobe change, there was something different in the way she carried herself. The easy way Aziraphale folded her coat across her arm, the way her shoulders were no longer hunched up near her ears. Her hand made a practiced, habitual motion to straighten her collar, then casually brushed through the cropped hair at her temple, and Crowley had never been more turned on in her life.

And she was also gawping like a fish. She couldn’t bloody _help_ it. A drop dead gorgeous butch woman was standing right in front of her, within touching distance, greeting her like they were friends, and all Crowley could manage was another _ngk._

“Just skip to the part where you make out,” Beelzebub muttered, which made Michael snigger.

Aziraphale glanced in that direction. “I beg your pardon?”

Beelzebub twirled their chair around. “I said, _do you have an appointment?”_

“Oh. No, I’m afraid not.” Aziraphale turned back at Crowley with a hopeful smile. “Although, now that I’m here, I would certainly like to make one. In two weeks, perhaps? I’m sure I’ll need a trim by then.”

“Nn, yeah, of course!” Crowley said, almost tripping over herself to get to the computer and open the schedule. “So you… you like it then? The hair?”

“Oh yes, I do!” Aziraphale exclaimed. “Though, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure at first. In fact, I spent two days hiding in my shop thinking I’d made a terrible mistake…”

Crowley’s gut plummeted.

“…but then I had to go out for a little shopping, and the very first person I met told me how much she loved it!” Aziraphale gushed. “And she wasn’t the only one, I’ve never received so many compliments on my appearance as I have in the past few weeks! All of my customers, my friends and acquaintances, they think it suits me very well. My manicurist even called me _dapper._ Can you imagine that?”

“Oh, that… that’s good!” Crowley said and tried not to sag with relief. “It _does_ suit you, by the way. You look like you walked straight out of those old fifties motion pictures.”

Aziraphale flushed in pleasure. “I truly must thank you, Crowley. I couldn’t have gone through with it if you hadn’t given me the courage, and I had _no_ _idea_ it would make me so happy. I feel like _myself,_ if that makes sense?”

By now, Crowley had nearly lost all knowledge of how language worked and stumbled through something that might have been a loose approximation of _you're welcome._ “Sso, teo weeks?”

“Yes, on a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, if you can manage.”

Crowley deleted an appointment for some bloke named Hastur and typed Aziraphale’s name in its place. “Got you down!” she said. “And now this begs the question… what did your family have to say about it?”

At that, Aziraphale flashed her a dastardly smirk. “Oh, they _hated_ it,” she said with relish. “I saw them last weekend at my godson’s birthday party. They were shocked, I could tell, but they couldn’t actually _say_ anything because all the children were raving about how ‘cool’ I look, the darlings. So my brother and cousins just had to stand there and smile and pretend to be perfectly fine with it! I haven’t had such fun at a family gathering in years!”

Crowley threw her head back with a cackle. “I would've paid to see that!”

Beelzebub snorted. _“I’ll_ pay her to take you in the back and—”

“So I’ll see you then!” Crowley said loudly. “You’ve got my card, I’ll write down the appointment for you…”

“And… perhaps… I was wondering if we could do lunch after?” Aziraphale stammered as Crowley was showing her to the door. “If that’s not inappropriate to ask…?”

“Sure, lunch! Absolutely! Wouldn’t miss it!”

“Oh, wonderful!” Aziraphale smiled at her for one last blinding moment. “I’ll see you then, my dear. Mind how you go.”

“Yep, ciao.”

The door swung shut behind Aziraphale’s departure, the little bell tinkling. Crowley hummed and went back to watering the plants in a much better mood.

It took her a full five seconds to register the last part of the conversation.

_“Holy f—!”_

“Aaand she’s useless for the rest of the day,” Michael sighed as Crowley collapsed dramatically to the floor.

“Was she ever useful in the first place?” Beelzebub retorted.

“I should’ve gone to my normal barber,” Newt muttered from Michael’s salon chair.

**Author's Note:**

> It’s a shame I don’t see Michael and Beelzebub portrayed together more often, whether as friends or as a ship. I’d call them Ineffable Sass, lol. Or Ineffable Corporate? I’ll think of something...


End file.
